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Rockport guide’s live ‘arsenal’ tackles bay action

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ROCKPORT — On any given trip to this anglers’ playground, Pirates of the Bay guide Doug Stanford is quick to dip into his “arsenal” to help haul keeper speckled trout, redfish and black drum into his boat.

Unlike the pirates of old who wielded cutlasses and cannons to pillage other ships for their treasures, Stanford uses his armory of various live baits to trick the sometimes-fickle saltwater trophies into latching on a hook.

When he discovers the right tool at the right time, the fishing action can be fast and furious.

“The live bait I use really depends on the day,” Stanford said. “Being able to find out what the fish want and then putting it out there for them is just part of the arsenal you need to have available.”

A guide working the bays and channels near Rockport for the past seven years, Stanford has developed and fine-tuned several different methods of luring big redfish, trout or drum into taking live bait.

This time of year, the trio of baits he normally keeps in his live well includes bait shrimp, pin perch and croakers. Later this month and into the summer, he adds piggy perch that he likes almost as much as croakers.

One of the most popular live baits along the coast — with a well-earned reputation of producing good catches of big trout and reds — croakers started arriving in the area a little early this year.

“The croakers are a little small now,” Stanford said during a recent early morning trip. “They are about 2 or 3 inches long and when they get a little bigger, they will be better bait.

“Big trout really love big croakers,” he said, adding that large speckled trout also started arriving a little early this year.

“With the warm winter and really high tides, the fish seem to be have been moving north along the coast a little sooner than normal,” Stanford said.

Another twist to the fishing equation this spring has been an unusual number of big redfish giving anglers a tussle.

“Last year we were catching a lot of 18- to 19-inch reds that we were tossing back (the slot limit for keeper redfish is 20-28 inches) and this year we are catching a lot of 29- to 30-inch oversized reds,” he said.

Anglers can keep one oversized redfish by using the red drum tag on their saltwater fishing license.

The go-to bait so far this year for Stanford has been a live shrimp threaded onto a 2/0 thin freshwater bass hook and free-lined with just a short leader and small split-shot to hold the bait on the bottom.

“I know it sounds strange, but they seem to hit the threaded shrimp better than a live one,” he said. “You have got to be willing to try something different.”

When putting pin perch into play, Stanford likes to cut the bait in half or just cut off its tail and fish on bottom with a little larger hook and heavier weight to hold the offering down where the big reds, black drum and other saltwater trophies are feeding.

“That taste of blood really attracts them to the bait,” he said. “If you don’t get a hit in about 15 minutes, you need to change baits or move to a different spot.”

If a croaker is to be the bait of choice, the noisy little relative of both speckled trout and redfish is hooked just above the anal opening with a 3/0 to 4/0 hook and is free-lined (no weight) down to where the hungry trophies are waiting.

When schools of bigger croakers — from about 3-5 inches long — move into the area, using them for bait is almost a sure thing for hooking into a big trout or redfish.

They are called croakers because of their ability to vibrate their swim bladders, a pocket full of air inside the fish that helps keep it afloat, causing a sound that can attract predator fish from quite a distance.

“I like to call this guerrilla fishing because you have to be willing to try a lot of different things and go into a lot of places that might not look like they would be good spots,” Stanford said.

His technique and arsenal of different baits proved to be quite successful on the trip that was part of Rockport’s 27th annual Spring Fling for outdoor writers.

In just about three hours, Stanford helped his anglers bring a 29-inch and a 27-inch redfish caught on pin perch cut bait; and two 20-inch black drum plus a couple nice sheepshead caught on threaded shrimp into the boat.

“Today wasn’t the day for using croakers for catching trout,” he said after the trip, “but you always have to be ready to try everything — that’s the way to put fish in the boat.”